Google grants are relied upon to pay for adverts that counter search results that appear to deny that the Holocaust happened, a Jewish heritage museum said on Wednesday.

The marketing director of the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia said it was “nauseating” that Google algorithms directed users to a neo-Nazi site as the top result for the phrase “did the Holocaust happen?”

He explained it cost the museum up to $2 (£1.60) a click to direct searchers to its own site via Google’s AdWords programme. The museum later made clear that the Breman is not a paid advertiser of Google, but in fact it receives a grant for free advertising from Google via its ad grants programme, which enables charitable and educational organisations like museums to apply to Google forfree advertising to drive awareness and promote educational messages, up to a limit of $10,000 a month. The programme has been running for several years.

The director of the Breman Museum, Aaron Berger, said that according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Georgia was one of the worst states in the US for active hate groups and using AdWords was an “incredibly important part of our approach in getting our site up the search results”.

A Google spokesman said last week: “We never want to make money from searches for Holocaust denial and we don’t allow regular advertising on those terms.”

It comes after an intense three weeks of pressure on the company regarding its search results. It has consistently refused to take responsibility for directing Google users to hate content including a neo-Nazi site, Stormfront, for a search for “did the Holocaust happen”.

Leading academics said it was probably holding firm because to “edit” content on one subject would lead to calls to take action over other controversial topics. Frank Pasquale,professor of law at the University of Maryland, said it would be a tacit admission that it was a publishing company and not a “neutral” platform, as it maintains.

On Tuesday, however, Google told a search industry website it had decided to make a algorithmic change to combat the problem.

In a story, headlined Official: Google makes change, results are no longer in denial over ‘Did the Holocaust happen?’ a Google spokesman said the company had recently made “improvements to our algorithm that will help surface more high quality, credible content on the web”.

But Barry Schwartz, the founder of Search Engine Roundtable, a long-standing industry site, said: “There is no evidence of any change to the algorithm. We track these things very carefully and there’s nothing to suggest they have done anything.”When asked why he thought Google had made the announcement at this time, he said: “It just seems like it must be a PR thing. That’s the only explanation I can see.”

Google confirmed that an algorithm change was under way. They said it was an ongoing process and would take some time to apply throughout the system.

The said: “When non-authoritative information ranks too high in our search results, we develop scalable, automated approaches to fix the problems, rather than manually removing these one-by-one.

“We constantly make improvements to our algorithm that help surface more high quality, credible content on the web, and will continue developing those efforts over time.”

Schendowich of the Berman Museum said Google was critical in getting the museum’s message about the Holocaust out: “Search is everything. It’s so powerful. People don’t respond to print. If you don’t show in search you are invisible.”

Its website does not show up on the first page of Google’s “natural” – ie not-paid for – search results for “Did the Holocaust happen”. Schendowich said the museum used very aggressive SEO techniques but it was hard because “Google is a big mystery. It’s a black box. Nobody knows how it works. Only Google.”

The museum’s director, Aron Berger, confirmed that the museum used the grant it received from Google to help it come higher up the search results than sites such as Stormfront via AdWords by targeting certain search terms.

Schendowich said: “We can’t afford to advertise that much because this is a very expensive search. It’s expensive because it’s popular. That’s how it works. You pay more to advertise Nike shoes than some other brand. This is the same. It’s a very hot topic and what bothers me is that a denier site is right at the top. It’s nauseating. Absolutely nauseating. I talk to so many people who survived it … it did happen. We have all the evidence. That’s what we’re doing. That’s why it’s so important.”

A Google spokesman said: “We have no interest in profiting from sites or organisations that promote hate, which is why we ban them from using our ads systems. Under some circumstances we allow advertising against offensive terms, typically by organisations whose mission involves educating people about the issues. Those organisations can and do apply for Ad Grants – free advertising to drive awareness and promote educational messages. We give hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free advertising to non-profit organisations through our Ad Grants programme.”

This article was amended on 24 December 2016. An earlier version was the subject of a complaint from Google. It stated that the museum claimed the search engine profited directly from displaying search results that denied the Holocaust through paid-for advertising.